Game Changers

The exhibition aspires to explore the process through which a new and unprecedented silhouette emerged in female fashion during the 20th century – new shapes which freed the body from previous constrictions, broke with established notions of beauty and femininity, and offered women a new way of seeing and experiencing their way of dressing. We are trying to convey this idea through the work of a group of game changing designers who were committed to establishing a new relationship between body and garment, from Vionnet and Chanel, to Kawakubo or Margiela. Balenciaga plays a fundamental role in this genealogy of silhouette innovation in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, linking the early innovators with the iconoclastic designers of the late century.

As in all fashion exhibitions, we are hoping to attract a wide audience, from fashion students interested in technical and conceptual innovation, to visitors who are interested in learning more about women’s liberation throughout the 20th century. 

We would like to present Balenciaga as a key and fundamental piece in this chain of silhouette innovation. We are not interested in glorifying his work or in picturing him as an isolated genius, but rather as someone who was influenced by ideas and designers that preceded him and, armed with his characteristic mastery of technique and his iconoclastic spirit, pushed fashion and form forward, influencing what was to come in the next decades. He is the missing link of the mid 20th century, the last of the modernist couturiers, the first of the conceptual designers.

It’s been difficult, as it always is when you are addressing an ambitious subject. Of course there are many other designers whose work can be considered ground breaking when it comes to experimenting with form, but we have decided to select those who have made of rethinking the female body a lifelong commitment.

I would say he was truly radical in his own time, paving an alternative way to the ever dominant New Look, although he never risked being placed at the margins of the haute couture system. He pushed fashion forward just enough to become one of its most prominent leaders, combining his radical vision with the widely accepted norm. However, his was a progressive experimentation, which initiated in the early 1940s and ended only with his retirement in 1968. Balenciaga worked with a small set of ideas that he kept coming back to and subjecting to progressive refinement. Very often, he introduced a radical silhouette that seemed to be ahead of his time, like the so called sack dress of 1957, and he would revisit the sack in consecutive seasons with more “moderate” versions that came to be seen as “acceptable” by his rather conservative clientele.

In historical terms, Balenciaga’s innovations took place in very recent times. He exerted a profound influence on his contemporaries, but it is equally true that he was rejected and disapproved of at the end of his career, in the late 1960s, when his most abstract and sculptural creations seemed out of touch with the youth revolution and the needs and demands of the new generation. Balenciaga’s work started to be reconsidered in the 1990s, with a renewed interest in couture and the debate around fashion and art more heated than ever. It is only natural that this Balenciaga “renaissance” would inspire a new generation of fashion designers forged or consolidated from the 1980s to the 2000s.

It is always difficult to bring aspects related to the designers’ personality or relationship to their work in the exhibition. However, my colleague and co-curator of the exhibition Karen Van Godtsenhoven has addressed in depth the diverse design practices of some of these game changers in her article for the exhibition catalogue, published by Bloomsbury. Karen engagingly illustrates how design methods inform the way these designers look upon the relationship between body and garment, and how this translates into a specific attitude towards the female body.

As you say, it is extremely difficult to discern clear silhouette trends in the characteristic diversity of the contemporary fashion scene. We were also intrigued by the way this process came about, this proliferation of shapes that replace one another at breakneck speed. It is also the aim of the exhibition to understand the “postmodern” eclecticism of contemporary fashion, as Elizabeth Wilson would call it. However, I’m sure that, in a few years, historical hindsight will enable us to identify a limited range of trends that were taking place at our own time, however overwhelming fashion might seem to us right now.

I think an active search for sources of inspiration does not imply a lack of creativity on the part of contemporary designers. Balenciaga is unanimously hailed as one of the most influential designers of the 20th century, and his work is always a legitimate and stimulating technical as well as aesthetic reference.